MindLab "How Public Design?"

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How public design?

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How public design?How public design?

Intro

“It is timely to try to rethink the way we deal with change and value-creation in these turbulent times. And it is a good idea to look closely at what design in practice has to offer.” Michael Dithmer, Permanent Secretary Ministry of Economic & Business Affairs (DEN))

Against the backdrop of economic crisis and massive demo-graphic change, governments across the globe must re-think public services at less cost. In the political context of public organisations, how does design offer a way forward? At the seminar ‘How Public Design?’ held on 1-2 September 2011, more than seventy participants met at MindLab, Copenhagen, to engage in this key question. During the seminar, practition-ers, academics and public managers from as diverse places as Singapore, the United States, Australia, Finland, France, the Netherlands, Belgium, United Kingdom, Norway and Denmark presented their experiences with the value of design within the public sector.

On the following pages, you can read about some of the experi-ences, ideas and insights that were shared over the two days. This booklet is structured just like the conference, in three sec-tions: People, Visualisation and Space. Each section presents what we found to be some of the highlights from the keynotes, parallel sessions, and plenary panel dialogues. Finally, we have extracted what we believe is an essential agenda for public decision-makers.

Given the wealth of extraordinary contributions, however, this document will not do justice to all the rich content that was shared in Copenhagen. To see more, go to MindLab’s website for full videos, PowerPoints and blog entries.

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Special contributions are also manifested in the excellent graphic illustrations by Jan Callesen (of which you will find four examples included as postcards) and in the physical struc-ture that was built by dynamic cultural collective Büro Detour (created in record time in the Ministerial courtyard outside the windows of the seminar).

Finally, I want to express my deep gratitude to every partici-pant, keynote speaker, chairman and workshop presenter as well as to MindLab’s conference team and Copenhagen Design Week for making How Public Design such a unique event.

Christian Bason, Director of Innovation, MindlabSeptember, 2011

“I’ve managed to get back home in one piece, but I think I left part of my soul behind in Copenhagen.” Banny Banerjee, Associate Professor Stanford University (US)

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People: How might we engage citi-zens differently?Involving citizens through observation and col-laboration is a key approach to driving change in public services.

Radical redesign is possibleIn their keynote address, Brenton Caffin and Carolyn Curtis from The Australian Centre for Social Innovation (AUS) il-lustrated how powerful it can be to create new public solu-tions with people, not for them. In Adelaide, South Australia, they have created the ’Family by Family’ model to radically redesign support for vulnerable families, helping them thrive again through mentor partnerships with ‘positive deviant’ fa-milies that have made it in spite of tough times. As a result, costs are cut and outcomes for children and families are dramatically better.

Paradoxically, the local government in Adelaide has yet to adopt this more effective model. Instead, Carolyn Curtis is working to spread the ’Family by Family’ approach from the ground up, one community at a time. Projects like this might not change the public system over night, but the seeds they plant can perhaps inspire others in power to explore how the rich reality of citizens can help drive change.

Communicating with peopleIn the breakout workshop sessions, a number of concrete examples of citizen involvement were discussed. For instan-ce, Stine Børglum and Lene Jeppesen from the Danish tax administration showed how they had asked a dozen citizens with different professional backgrounds (a cartoonist, a writer, a numerologist, a rhetorician) to use their talents to reflect on how the Tax Ministry writes about property tax to new home owners. How would they choose to communicate the content of such a tax letter? The challenge now is how to

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make the insights from this creative experiment stick within the organisation.

Similarly, Lynne Maher of the NHS (UK) and Anne Ryslinge from the Board of Industrial Injuries (DEN) shared how their respective organisations benefited from observing and in-volving citizens in service design. They showed how surpris-ing insights about patient’s practice, or injured workers, can drive innovative thinking.

“Our challenge is to show people that design is better at improving services than any of the other existing approaches.” Lynne Maher, Director Design and Innovation NHS Institute (UK)

“Beta”: A new design principle for public service?Could the idea of “beta” – unfinished designs that users can still improve upon – be a new approach to the shaping interactions between public sector organisations and the citizens they serve? In the recognition of the complexity of many societal problems and unintended outcomes, John Holager of Live:Work, (NO), explained how ‘beta’ accepts the premise that a solution is never entirely finished. Instead, it invites every type of user to give the feedback needed in order to constantly refine the service. Launching a service in a beta version and learning early from the process might reduce costs and the risk of failure. Launching a beta version of a public service will actively engage the citizens and users in co-creating the service in a shared process of experimen-tation and feedback.

“Beta welcomes feedback.” Brenton Caffin, Founding CEO, The Australian Centre of Social Innovation, TACSI (AUS)

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Visualisation: How to enable a better dialogue?

Visualisation can be a powerful tool for creating a shared vision of the future.

Visualisation sparks conversationIn his inspirational keynote Rasmus Rune Nielsen, Managing Director of the 2+1 Ideas Agency (DEN), showed two examp-les of how visual images can capture the imagination of decision-makers and the wider public. At one extreme was the decision to ship Danish national icon The Little Mermaid to the 2010 World Expo in Shanghai, China, which enabled a renewed conversation about identity and Denmark’s offe-rings as a nation of “wellfairytales”. At the other extreme was 2+1 Agency’s recent recasting of infamous Danish ghetto Vollsmose as a tourist destination, using a range of visuals and branding techniques to build on strengths such as cul-tural diversity and human curiosity of the unknown.

“Visualisations make a movie in people’s heads. With small means they can have a very persuasive effect.” Simona Maschi, Founder and Director, CIID (DEN)

Graphic illustrations, models, videos, photos, drawings, symbols and other visual tools are important because they can serve as powerful enablers of a conversation on what we want to project or accomplish with a proposed change of a system or a service. Images serve to make the abstract concrete. It can be hard to visualise the complexity of social reality and the implications of change, but graphical repre-sentations can help.

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Visualising the problem, the process, the solutionThe seminar illustrated how public managers can benefit from at least three applications of visualisation, ranging from start to end of a development process.

First, visualising information in novel ways can help decisi-on-makers view current problems from new perspectives. Public managers often take decisions on the basis of num-bers – but visualisation allows them to see such numbers differently. Today, public organisations are already overlaying multiple datasets on geographical maps to identify surpris-ing patterns. For instance, what is the prevalence of medical clinics in areas of wealth versus areas of social deprivation in a given country? Some public organisations are opening up databases for the public at large to download and ma-nipulate as they see fit. Nonetheless, visual tools are still unconventional and rare are in a public management setting.

“For me, a key reminder is the fact that images are produced in people’s heads, not only on paper.” John Holager, Director, Live:Work (NO)

Second, visualisation can power the very process of desig-ning new solutions. Visualisation can help form common points of reference and enhance understanding across mul-tiple organisational silos, professions, cultures or discipli-nes. Alok Nandi, Designer, Architempo (BE) pointed out that visualisation must be driven by the intent and imagination of the designer. Stephane Vincent , Founder, La 27th Region (FR) showed case examples of how citizens can co-design public services in practice via visual tools.

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Third, visual design helps enable the change we would like to see in the world: As when tax forms are redesigned or when physical environments, such as citizen service centres, are changed to create dramatically better experiences, flow of people and interactions.

”The vision may be radical, but change is incre-mental.” Natascha Dexters, Head of Division Ministry of Taxation (DEN)

If visualisation enables the change we would like to see in the world, how come election posters rarely show more than a face? That question was raised by both Rasmus Rune Nielsen, Managing Director of the 2+1 Ideas Agency (DEN) and Graphic Designer Richard van der Laaken, Designpolitie (NED).

“The fact that in designing services in the pub-lic space we forget that correspondence is still such an important and predominant tool and ultimately such a tangible embodiment of peo-ple’s experience and understanding of govern-ment. So it would be eye opening to put each and all those pieces of paper on a wall to see the path and the amount of correspondence that any given interaction still requires.” Manuel Toscano, Principal, ZAGO (US)

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Creating space for design dialogue?

Managers must secure the time, space and or-ganisational anchoring of design practice.

Re-imagining governmentThe session was kicked off by Phillip Colligan, Director of NESTA’s Public Services Lab (UK), who grabbed the attention of the audience as he showed a photo from the movie “A Per-fect Storm”, displaying a tiny fishing boat being engulfed by a massive wave. In doing so, he succinctly framed the nature of the challenges facing public servants not just in England, but across many industrialised countries. One might also extend the metaphor to the design project itself: Are at-tempts to take a design approach to public problem-solving as vulnerable as the fishing boat against the mighty power of bureaucracy? How can design projects find calmer waters to thrive and demonstrate results?

Colligan showed a string of projects where the active enga-gement of citizens underlined that public managers can in fact let go of some control and let citizens into the arena of core service provision through co-design and co-production of services. According to Colligan, there is a much wider potential for re-imagining public services than we currently acknowledge – and citizen engagement is the key. As the British government drives public service reform under the slogan of the Big Society, it is looking to design for help revi-talise the relationship between citizens and the state. Embedding designDuring the breakout and plenary sessions, a wide variety of themes were addressed, but all circled on the notion of how to embed design more fundamentally in the organisation. In the plenary, Banny Banerjee, Professor, Standford University chaired a panel of Anna Kirah, Senior Business Developer,

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STERIA (NOR), Nina Terrey, Design Director and Partner Thinkplace (AUS), Bryan Boyer, Strategic Design Lead, Sitra (FIN) Runa Sabroe, Project Manager and Christian Bason both from MindLab. The panellists discussed the future of design in organisations, pointing out how, on the one hand, design must become part of an internal practice, while it must also draw on outside sources and inspiration to feed innovation. Several panellists addressed the barriers that design practice often encounters in public organisations, making it hard for new approaches to policy and service design to really ’stick’.

Fear of change is probably part of the equation. By illustra-ting concrete solutions, design can challenge the nature of bureaucracy. But what are we really afraid of? Should we not also fear that we won’t be precise enough? Should we not fear that we will never see the change we want to create in the world?

”The difficulty with seminars, workshops, con-ferences etcetera is always how to translate design thinking into design acting when you are back in your daily routine.” Richard van der Laaken, Graphic Designer, Designpolitie (NED).

“It takes integration of multiple levels of leader-ship in an organisation to embed design think-ing.” Nina Terrey, Design Director and Partner Thinkplace (AUS)

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Outro

Citizens are ready to co-design more meaning-ful public services with us. So what is holding us back from engaging with them?

Public managers must take the leadIt is impossible to crystallise a single essence of the hund-reds of conversations that took place during ’How Public Design’. But one overarching point seemed clear: It is the responsibility of the decision-makers to redefine the rela-tionship between the public system and citizens, so it both becomes more meaningful and more productive. To do so, we must engage citizens to co-design the new interactions.

This implies, at a fundamental level, that public managers must acknowledge their personal responsibility for the qua-lity of the relationship between system and citizens. They must have the ambition to make it better. This is perhaps not a new agenda, but is an agenda that has yet to unleash its potential within the public sector.

So, how to do it? Here are three perspectives that could start the conversation.

Start with interactionsFirst, public managers must make the move to grasp how interactions are experienced by citizens. Rather than begin-ning with ’system redesign’, even if that might be perceivedas the ultimate goal, managers must begin with citzens’ service pathways. As Richard Buchanan, Professor, Wea-therhead School of Management (US) critically stressed in his closing remarks: “It is impossible for a human being to experience a sys-tem - impossible by definition. A true system is the total-

Implementing Public Design

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ity of what has happened, is happening, and will happen within a given combination of parameters. Recognizing the limitation of our efforts to grasp the central idea or principle of a system should make us cautious and less arrogant. What we really experience is only our per-sonal pathway through a system. The implication is that instead of trying to design a grand system and force ourselves to live within it, we will be better served if we plan from the pathways of our experience, gradually learning the interdependencies that constitute a system. We should begin from what is humanly meaningful, even as we try to discover the nature of a system.”

In the public domain, ‘interaction’ exists in multiples. There is not only interaction between various human players, but also interaction between different kinds of organisational structures, system logics, institutional principles, professio-nal competencies and various types of technology. And these interactions are changing constantly.

Consequently, the relationships between citizens and the public sector are characterised by unpredictable develop-ments and unintended outcomes. Designing ‘meaningful pathways of experience’ calls not only for an exploration of the everyday lives and experience of public service users, it calls for discovering the radically different roles and relati-onships that the public organisation can take a primary part in facilitating. This puts tremendous pressure on the tradi-tional roles of public employees and managers.

Allow people to contribute Second, the design approach emphasises the active invol-vement of people. Its holistic perception of problems and possible solutions recasts the public innovation process as a collective effort of co-design and co-production. It is not only aimed at ensuring that potential solutions are ‘in tune’ with the everyday life of citizens, front-line workers or other users, but at creating a shared perception of ownership for

the way in which new practice is to be carried out. This is a huge challenge in the context of the public sector since designers are eager to make things happen quickly while public decision-making processes and system logics require patience for change to actually unfold and materialise.

At the same time, design calls for the elimination of silo-thinking. Public leaders must be more courageous in breaking with conventional methods and embark as explo-rers on journeys of design-led change. The potential is the identification of fruitful ways of overstepping traditional boundaries of ministries, agencies, sectors, resorts and hierarchies, and then rehearsing future ways of organising and orchestrating new practices. The challenging question is how to ensure anchoring and support to sustain continuity?

Create new practiceFinally, managers must ’rehearse the future’ by embracing design approaches such as visualisation, rapid prototyping and experimentation. Public design processes have to simul-taneously ensure the continuous and more intelligently fa-cilitated collaborative effort of the various players in society as well as actively and continuously frame expectations for the purpose and character of the new potential relationship between the citizen and the public sector.

The design approach can be a key factor in managing expec-tations of public service development by, as Helsinki Design Lab’s Bryan Boyer phrased it, “aspiring to different types of performance and permanence”. As such, public design is ori-ented towards creating new legitimate practice by framing expectations through collaborative processes of concrete visualisations of reality. The challenge is that the ‘product’ of public design is dynamic; the creation of a new practice, whether it is a policy or a service, is never perfectly establis-hed, but needs to live continuously and ever-changing within the communities of people.

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The journey aheadThe challenge now is not for a group of seventy insiders to confirm for each other that these three points constitute an essential agenda. The challenge is to make change happen.

To this end, there will be numerous opportunities to meet again in the next few years, and assess our progress: With La 27e Region in Lille, France; with What Design Can Do in Amsterdam; in Helsinki, which will be Design Capital 2012; and of course again at Mindlab during the next Copenhagen Design Week in 2013.

Join the conversation!

Løsninger

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MindLabSlotsholmsgade 121216 Copenhagen KDenmark+45 3392 3144 [email protected]

Content and editing:Christian BasonAnette VæringAnna Helene MollerupAnna Sofie JacobsenJesper ChristiansenMindLab

Design and Photos:Anette VæringMatylda RasmussenMindLab

Postcard drawings:Jan Oksbøl Callesen

Copies:500

Paper:Munken Polar 90g./130g./300g.

Printing:ReklameTryk, Herning

© MindLab 2011

About MindLab: MindLab is a cross-ministerial innovation unit that leverages design and ethnography to help government departments involve citizens in creating better public policies and services. MindLab is part of the Danish Ministries of Economic & Business Affairs, Employment and Taxation.

Documents

MindLab "How Public Design?"